


To the Moon

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 16:42:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16957725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: Raylan gets divorced, goes hunting fugitives, and finds Boyd Crowder. Working for NASA, of all things.





	To the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt, "Soon after the implosion of his marriage and his move to Miami, Raylan chases a fugitive to the Kennedy Space Center and finds out Boyd is working there as a researcher who designs and tests rocket propellants." Originally posted on tumblr.

They get word that the fugitive is in Houston the same morning that the rest of Raylan’s boxes arrive from Georgia. All the boxes are labeled ‘Raylan Givens’ in Winona’s neat, straight-backed lettering, none of the swirls and hearts she drew around ‘Givens’ when she was practicing a signature for her new name. Raylan doesn’t bother to open the boxes before he heads out the door. He stacks them on top of all the other boxes in his new living room, the apartment nothing but white stucco walls and beige carpet that smells of old cigarettes, a toilet and a shower without a curtain and a mattress, all surrounded by the packing boxes that he got in the divorce.

Some of the boxes had come with them from Salt Lake City, carefully filled and stacked into the U-Haul and driven east, stored up in the Georgia attic of their first home. Raylan thinks it’s only fair he got the boxes; after all, it’s Winona who got the realtor. He left her the mattress, and all of the sheets.

The fugitive is aiming for Mexico, of course, just like all the fugitives Raylan’s chased, each of them running for the border, running from the unerring aim of Raylan’s gun. Raylan’s new boss, Dan, says that Raylan’s got a knack for tracking down fugitives. Dan thinks it’s a talent; calls it a gift, praises his newest employee’s bloodhound nose. It ain’t in the nose, of course; and if it’s a gift, it’s just the gift of knowing where a man might go when he’s trying to escape all the life that’s come before.

It made the divorce easier, Winona just one more thing to leave behind. Raylan took off his ring and signed his papers and headed for the border, wound up at the sea.

It was hardly the first time he’d driven all night, pedal to the floor and grit in his eyes, refusing to check his rearview mirror and see what he’d left behind.

Raylan goes to Houston. It’s his job. (The Houston office doesn’t think so, but that’s Dan’s problem, not Raylan’s.)

Houston is muggy, with terrible traffic and worse roads. Ain’t so different from Miami. Everything smells like exhaust, and Raylan tells himself he doesn’t mind. He doesn’t take his nose hunting for fresh air, for the sharp smell of the first mountain frost, for the crunch of pine needles under his shoes and the thick scent of turned earth in the spring rain. He doesn’t go looking for what he’s left behind.

He didn’t expect it to go looking for him.

“Raylan?” Raylan turns. He’s never met another Raylan, even in a crowded bar in an overgrown city in Texas, and so the chances are that the person shouting is – “Raylan Givens, is that you? Don’t tell me you’ve gone and become a cowboy?”

Raylan blinks. Gives his head a quick shake, and blinks again, because it’s impossible that _Boyd Crowder_ has just shoved his way into a seedy bar in Houston, Texas. It’s impossible that Boyd Crowder could exist in Texas. Raylan must have made a wrong turn somewhere, hunting this fugitive, got lost on the six-lane interstates the way tourists always did on the back roads of the hills.

Raylan’s thirty-five years old. He hasn’t seen Boyd Crowder for almost sixteen years. He’d stopped wondering what Boyd was doing every moment of the day. He’d stopped wondering if Boyd had gone back into the mines, if Boyd was still alive.

“What are you doing here?” Raylan says stupidly, gaze flicking from the ruffled edges of Boyd’s dark hair to the shaving cut on his cheek to the hole in the sleeve of Boyd’s shirt, each image like a puzzle piece missing the box, a jumble of colors with jagged edges and no way to make a whole.

“Why, the United States government has seen fit to procure my rocket-building services,” Boyd declares, grinning, because Boyd had always believed that a stupid question demanded a grandiose lie. “I won’t ask what you’re doing here, Raylan, as you are obviously a man at the end of a long cattle drive.”

“You might say that,” Raylan agrees, and doesn’t flash his badge. He waves the bartender over to refill his whiskey, orders another for the man standing next to him. Boyd’s arm brushes Raylan as he reaches for his drink. Raylan knocks his elbow into Boyd’s arm, just to see the whiskey slosh over the sides of the glass. Boyd curses, and Raylan almost believes he’s really there.

“Don’t go telling me everything all at once,” Boyd drawls into the silence, leans back and surveys Raylan like Raylan is a car Boyd plans to steal, a rock wall he’ll take down with dynamite and leave nothing but ash and shards. “Give me a moment to take you in.”

Boyd’s knee knocks into Raylan’s under the bar. He doesn’t shift away. He never had. Raylan should head for the door. He should try the next bar, or the next, should get back to hunting fugitives before the Houston office actually mans up and does its job. He should get into his car and drive for the border, keep his eyes on the horizon instead of sharing a drink with everything he tried to leave behind, instead of leaning forward to see if Boyd still smells like lake water and fire damp and fresh mountain air.

Raylan tips his hat back. He doesn’t shift away. Boyd ain’t wrong about Raylan being at the end of a long drive, and Raylan’s always thought a fugitive should have the sense to realize he’s lost, at the end, to see that he’ll never make the border – to see that the best thing for him to do once he’s caught is to put his gun down and his hands up, to stop running and give in.

“You got somewhere else to be?” Boyd wonders, careful not to fidget with his glass, cool as an iceberg except for the fact that he’s got Raylan’s leg pinned between both of his.

Raylan thinks of the apartment in Miami, the stacks of boxes fresh from Georgia, thinks of ‘Raylan & Winona Givens’ written in straight-backed letters, of the scent of Winona’s perfume that lingers inside. He thinks of Dan, and the office, and a man hightailing it for Mexico. He shakes his head. “Thought I might stay here awhile,” he says, shrugging. Raylan’s spent nearly a decade catching fugitives. He’s spent twice that running. He can recognize _caught_ when he sees it.

Raylan lets go of his gun. He puts his hands up, rests his fingers on the bar so that they just brush the nail of Boyd’s thumb. He leans in to see if Boyd still smells like cheap aftershave and coal dust and mown grass and the mist before the dawn burns it out of the hills. He gives in.


End file.
